09.06.2004

Seeing Red - After June 10: crucial turning point for SWP

David Broder of the CPGB's minority RED Platform looks at the prospects for the Socialist Workers Party after the elections.

After June 10: crucial turning point for SWP

As I write this, I have no idea of how the election on June 10 will turn out for Respect. Therefore, I will set out the implications of the scenarios of both success and defeat for the Socialist Workers Party.

Respect wins a seat or two

Who would have thought it? Respect winning a seat might not have changed the political system, but all the same, this represents a noticeable victory for the anti-war movement, if not for socialists. It is good to know that at least some of those on last February’s march went out to vote for us, although it is likely that the anti-war vote will have swung much more towards the Liberal Democrats.

            However, the implications of winning seats will be that the SWP’s rush to the right goes into a higher gear. Most elements in the SWP, not to mention George Galloway, will want to keep Respect going; to have such an iron grip on a ‘party’ which holds influence is the absolute objective of opportunists, desperate to win national recognition for their centre-left struggle.

            Even then, success would not have been possible without a very low turnout, although in fairness the ‘party’s’ lack of recognition is equally a result of voter apathy. Indeed, the media reaction to the result will probably not be scaremongering about the rise of the extreme left, but they will merely equate Respect’s support to the same short-term pacifist sentiment which has so greatly aided the Liberal Democrats.

            For a vote for Respect is not representative of any sort of public migration to the left, but is merely an expression of how bland Respect’s programme is. The ‘universally acceptable’ approach was always one guaranteed to win support of a section of the muslim community. I do not share Nick Rogers’ optimism in the hope that electoral success will be the “birth of a genuine new leftwing challenge to New Labour” (Weekly Worker June 3). What will happen is that the SWP will be even more enthusiastic in deepening their coalition with dubious reformists and reactionaries.

            Respect’s future is highly uncertain, since a ‘party’ based on populist rather than socialist roots is always doomed to failure - the current crusade in the Middle East will not last forever. The fact that it relies so heavily on the current anti-war sentiment will leave Respect in ruins when the Iraq fiasco has been forgotten in a few years.

            Without the pictures of torture on their leaflets, they will seem little different from the Greens or even the Liberal Democrats, except with an islamic twist. Of course, Respect was initially willing to embrace the Greens, before blaming them for being ‘anti-socialist’ and having too many “white middle class” candidates. Yet without a significant ideological shift away from populism or sops to islam, Respect cannot remain a coalition that even quietly speaks of socialism.

            However, neither does it seem likely that the entire Respect party would want to move in this direction.  Fragmentation of the party seems almost inevitable, even in the short term. The SWP itself will not be immune to splits either.

Respect fails to win a seat

Given that Respect is a fairly loose confederation of groups, it seems hard to believe that the Muslim Association of Britain and others will want to stay. After all, they only intend to win places for their own representatives through the ‘party’ structure, so will feel no compulsion to remain if it does not seem that it is an appropriate framework for them to satisfy their aims. Greens, the Liberal Democrats et al will be absolutely acceptable organisations for many of the various elements of Respect to join after its collapse, which may happen very quickly. Respect will thus implode.

            Yet it is still too early to determine if the SWP leadership will see defeat as the spark to ‘return’ to the working class and socialism. Two scenarios are the most likely.  Either the Rees-German faction will remain dominant or the lesson learnt is that socialists will need a ‘final’ lurch to the right to tap the ‘anger’ out there.

            The second scenario might be more likely. Not simply will electoralism be abandoned, but the SWP will retreat from even the struggle to fight elections on a principled Marxist basis. The baby will be thrown out with the bathwater. Instead, it will return to the past ‘glory days’ of Tony Cliff, when workerist economism ruled the roost. The lessons it will have learnt is that fighting elections inevitably pulls socialists to the right. Opportunism will, thus, be replaced by crude syndicalism.

A note of optimism

Either way, splits will manifest themselves in the SWP. This will not be a good thing in and of itself. If demoralisation or disorientation sets in, we could see hundreds of good socialists in its ranks quit politics.

            This makes it imperative that those who have not been blinded by the Respect project intervene as a matter of urgency in the SWP. If a section of the SWP, perhaps even a majority, can be won to principled communist politics, then all will not be lost from this sorry tale.